Whilst bimbling around today an idea popped into my tiny brain.
How easy would it be to create proportional road tax?
Many owners of cars like ours are paying road tax that is much higher than newer cars yet drive far fewer miles.
My idea would be to ascertain an average for annual mileage then charge drivers a proportion of that average based on annual mileage.
If the average were 10K miles a year and cost £400 then my 2500 miles would be 1/4 of the average equating to £100. Much more palatable.
There would be many business users and some private drivers) doing more than the average of course so they would pay more to make up the shortfall. Probably less popular with them but they are the ones hammering the roads and pumping out significantly more by way of emissions.
Additionally, a mileage related tariff could be applied to vehicles that currently pay no tax.
Perhaps 50% of the total due to mileage only.
Your suggestion doesn’t include any weighting for how polluting a vehicle is, which (to a point) I think is a fair element of VED.
I’d quite like a cap on total VED paid in a year for those (like me) that own multiple vehicles. I can only drive one at a time so having to pay full rate for all of them is a bit annoying. First world problem, I know.
Apparently the government says that VED pays for the upkeep of the road network. If that is the case, how come an mx5 weighing 960kg (and thus only lightly damaging the roads) costs a lot more than your typical ‘eco’ electric 2.5 ton beast!
VED (“Road Fund Licence”) hasn’t been hypothecated since the 1936 Finance Act, which wound up the Road Fund. The Road Fund was established to make the constructuion and maintenance of roads self financing, to avoid the Exchequer being asked to fund new roads. But it never really worked, because the powers that be considered it represented a subsidy to road hauliers at the expense of rail. The fund ran into surplus and Chancellors used to routinely raid it to pay for other things. Chancellor Churchill claimed the Road Fund would lead to Road Tax payers to claim they owned the roads.
Ever since, road construction and maintanence is paid out of general taxation, both local and national.
VED contributes to the upkeep of the roads along with other government revenues. Someone who never uses the roads is effectively subsidising the rest.
About £11bn is spent on roads each year, roughly 50-50 national/ local. VED raises about £9.5 bn.
2.5 ton EV’s? Yes, that’s bad enough but I wonder how much these tractors as big as my house weigh with a similar sized full muck spreader?
Last winter I couldn’t walk my usual route in the winter as the local roads were flooded. Nothing to do with global warming but everything to do with total lack of maintenance of ditches.
I went out one day and dug out a few channels into the ditches and three floods, one six months old, disappeared within minutes. Local parish councils used to employ a “lengthsman” who would do nothing else but maintain the ditches. Not any more.
Within a week all my work had been wasted as lorries, SUV’s and mega tractors had just pulverised the verges and ditches. Think the Somme and the way trenches were flattened by shelling.
How much VED do these tractors pay?
Govt : “If you own a vehicle that is used solely for the purpose of agriculture, horticulture or forestry, it is exempt from vehicle tax.”
So the answer is … Sweet Fanny Adams - and I’m the son of a farmer. Mind you, the old man never drove anything bigger than a 1956 Nuffield.
Just be thankful that we have very few toll roads in the UK. On a recent fortnight’s holiday in France, the total toll charges came to about £85 using the autoroutes for the long slogs between Calais → Giverny (near Paris) → The Loire valley (we were based near Tours) → Calais, with short stints for visiting various chateaux within a 40 mile radius of our accommodation. That was for a total of about 1,150 miles whilst in France
One difference between toll roads and road tax (VED) is that the toll roads are generally optional aren’t they?
Given the choice of lower VED and more toll roads I’d take that option and then plan to avoid the toll roads.
The journeys might take a bit longer but it’s a small price to pay. (I attempt to avoid motorways and dual carriageways where I can in the MX-5 anyway).
The A38/A446 Weeford to Curdworth (via The Belfry) road that runs parallel to the BNRR toll road almost from Lichfield to the M42 north of the NEC is a case in question.
It seems to be a generational thing though. My son seems quite happy to set fire to £10-15 to drive the road. I drive the free option every time.
Toll roads are road pricing though and so are on the table by all accounts. The BNRR hasn’t made money. HGVs avoid them. I can’t see corporates rushing to take them on, unless lucrative taxpayer guarantees are on offer. PFI 2.0?
I’ve taken the M6 toll in preference to the A5 lots of times and sometimes instead of the M6. I value my time and sanity. If it’s going to provide me with a clear run and save 20 - 30 minutes, which it can do when the M6 is broken, then I’ll happily pay. For the sake of five minutes, then no.
I don’t think I’ve ever taken it instead of the A38/A446 combination so it really depends on your journey IMO.
Fuel duty already addresses most of the issues. If you do high miles each year, or have a thirsty engine compared to low miles, economical engine, driven carefully, it is all reflected in how much fuel you buy and so, how much fuel duty you pay. Doesn’t work with electric cars of course.
Worth every penny!
I always take that, for several reasons
. No potholes
. No traffic
. Avoids spaghetti junction (so many things dangerously wrong with that bit of M6)
. Excellent services in exactly the right point on my journeys between North Wales and London
Agree about fuel duty and also about BEVs and plug in hybrids. It’s going to be a shock to some when HMG finds a way to appropriately tax these vehicle for road use - especially when they are so much heavier and therefore mor damaging to road surfaces and more polluting in terms of brake and tyre wear products which are already a major contributor to particulate air pollution.
